


Teenage Deertbag

by Otterly



Series: deer/tiger idiots [5]
Category: Zootopia (2016)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-11
Updated: 2019-06-11
Packaged: 2020-04-24 19:11:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19179622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Otterly/pseuds/Otterly
Summary: Party time.





	Teenage Deertbag

 

Oh, god. I think I’m gonna die.

The world feels like it’s tipping with me as I totter over the edge of the air hockey table. That last cup of Cariboo Draft isn’t sitting the best in my stomach. Time is weird—in my own mind I tell myself not to throw up like ten times, but in real life only a few seconds have passed.

I’m not a pussy though. I’m not getting sick at my first party.

I choke down my gag reflex and glare at the reindeer standing across from me, a neon red plastic striker in her hooves.

Zuri came with her brother, and her antlers are looking extra nice this evening—there’s even a cute daisy chain wrapped like a vine around her left one that perfectly compliments the yellow varsity jacket she’s got on. It’s unbelievably pretty, and I hate it.

She says something that I don’t hear over the crowd of screaming, drunk teenagers and the polar bear electronic music blaring from the surround sound, but I read lips well enough to know that she just told me to hurry up.

“Fuck _you_  fuck you fuck you,” I slur. “I’m trying to find the puck.”

“You just put it in your pocket, you goddamn lightweight!” she yells.

Did I? I fish an electric blue disk out of my skinny jeans.

Oh. I guess I did. I can’t help but laugh a little to the tune of Zuri’s groaning.

The puck glides on its own after I toss it onto the table. I let get close enough to the midline so that Zuri thinks she has a shot and then I’m like lightning—I swing and the puck speeds past her clumsy, slow, gigantic reindeer hooves, moving to her side and hitting the sidelines. It bounces off and comes back to me before her striker pulls back to defend her goal. As soon as it gets back to my I take another shot, this time from an angle, and I watch as the blue disc morphs into a blur, sprinting into Zuri’s goalpost like it has a mind of its own.

I smile as soon as I hear the smooth, satisfying _click_  it makes when it enters.

Zuri looks at me, appalled. I throw my striker at her face.

She tilts her head out of the way, and it hits the back of Rodrick the rabbit’s head. He turns to glare at me as Zuri’s face comes back to block him. Fuck you, Rodrick.

Wait a minute, I just beat Zuri in a game!

“Garbage,” I wheeze, laughing all the while. “You’re so _bad_  at this fucking game I can’t believe you can even do sports!”

She rolls her eyes as I strut away. Half of our year is here and I gotta go like, mingle. But before I mingle I have to make myself presentable and that _doesn’t_  mean cleaning my face up or fixing my outfit but it _does_  mean that I have to drink more. I need to have fun tonight, before it reaches its inevitable conclusion and I have to do what I came here to do, and I’m not _half_  as destroyed as I have to be.

Does that make sense? Probably not. I don’t care.

When I’m only halfway to the stairs leading to Cameron’s room to get more of my booze from the mini fridge, a hoof pulls me into another room—one of Mrs. Sondaica’s exercise rooms. The party’s immediately muffled. It sounds like mix of a bunch of robots having sex, and a really rowdy school assembly. The kind where there’s a bunch of mammals vying for seats on the student council and their speeches are filled with memes and bad jokes—same thing, I know, haha, you’re very funny. But it sounds like that.

I gag a little bit for no reason, but it’s whatever. Mind over matter. I raise a brow at Zuri as she kicks the door closed and turns to face me.

She puts her hooves on her hips. “What are you doing?”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

She gestures to the length of my teetering body. “You’re drunk.”

“So?”

“Why?” she asks. “You’re not the party type. The _party_  type, I mean. You’re completely manic and unbearable when you’re sober as it is.”

I snort. “I just wanted to have a little extra fun tonight.”

“…Because?”

“That’s for me to know and for you to find out…” I crack a smile and put a hoof on her shoulder. She looks at me like she’s wearing a white dress and I’ve just wiped mud onto her. “Look, don’t worry, Zerzerr, it’s going to be _great.”_

Zuri gives me a look, and for the first time in like a year I see what she looks like when she’s not being a one-upping little sarcastic bitch of an ungulate.

She’s worried, and it’s a good look on her, but I don’t need it. I pat her shoulder twice and exit the room, ignoring the exasperated sigh that she lets out.

* * *

 

I got to Cameron’s room, looked at the mini fridge, and then lied down and fell asleep.

Not my best moment, but you really, really have to understand: tiger beds are among the comfiest objects alive—especially in Tundratown, where you’re freezing half of the time. There’s something about them. I’ve watched Cameron make his bed like two million times at this point, but I can’t pinpoint what he does to make it so darn _comfy._

Anyway, I wake up in Cameron’s toasty, honey-scented bed and check my phone.

I’ve only been asleep for fifteen minutes. Good. I’d have to throw myself into a lake with no clothes on if I somehow slept through this party.

The door opens. My best friend walks through, looking relieved.

“Of course you were here,” says Cameron as he closes the door. He sits at the foot of the bed and laughs. “You know for a second I thought you were outside throwing up. You’ve been hitting it really hard.”

“Fair,” I admit, closing my eyes. “I’ve never drunk before. Been drunk. Drank.”

“It’s worrying.”

“Yeah, I don’t know if I’m gonna do this again.”

“You want me to kick everyone out?” he asks.

“Nah, I just need a second.”

“Good, because they’re about to play Nighthowler and they were wondering where you were. I thought you might want to try playing it how it’s supposed to be played.”

With watered-down vodka and 80% ABV grain alcohol, he means. We usually just play with tomato juice and this weird Pandan hot sauce that we found in his mom’s condiments cabinet. I stretch, cracking my back a little.

“Are you okay?” Cameron asks. “You’ve kind of…”

“What?” I stop my stretching to look at him, moving my legs a bit so the covers slip right off my lower half like water off of a perfectly rounded stone, so, you know, he can get a decent angle of my butt. But his eyes barely look away from mine.

The tease.

“Nothing.” He shakes his head. It’s really hard to read his expression. “Nevermind.”

I sit up and get beside him. “Hey…”

“Yeah?” he turns his head slightly.

I reach for his paw.

“Yooooooooo _oooooo,”_ someone calls from outside, their voice echoing through the halls and travelling through the door. “Where the fuck is Jamie?”

“—Cameron!” someone else says, but I didn’t hear the first part. I hear a few mammals laugh.

Cameron stands and walks towards the door. I do the courteous thing and check out _his_  butt. He turns around before I can think of anything I can do with it, though, and he has the most happiest, nicest, smile on his face that makes me smile too. I don’t even care that he can probably see how much I’m blushing.

“Time to greet your adoring public,” he says sweetly. Like he’s a talking cupcake.

“You’re the best,” I breathe. “The best ever. Thanks for letting me do this here.”

Cameron laughs dryly and helps me to my hooves. “I couldn’t have stopped you if I tried.”

 

* * *

 

Me and Zuri sit at the dining table, a small crowd gathered around us. The music’s been turned down a tad, but other mammals are still in other parts of the house doing their own thing so it’s not like it’s super quiet. It really feels like it, though. Feels like I’m about to play a basketball game or something.

Across from us is Zuri’s brother Minh—a slim panda (yes, slim for a panda) in a black hoodie and sleepy blue eyes, one eye spot being bigger than the other. He’s a year younger than us but he still hangs out with the kids in our grade. Beside him sits Lacy, a cute little snowshoe hare in a fuzzy pink crop top that I haven’t talked to much, but I kinda owe her my life because she let me copy her math homework a few months ago.

Adjacent to us, sitting at the head of the table is Torsten, a chamois in a white button up and the director of the school’s winter musical. He’s on his phone, looking like he’s doing a million things at once, as always. I’ve heard stories about him—apparently he’s a monster at Nighthowler. But I’m definitely going to beat him.

On the table are plastic shot glasses me and Cammie bought from Woolmart a few hours ago, one in front of each of us.

“Ready?” Dmitri, another snowshoe hare wearing a full tracksuit, asks loudly. He stands beside me with two rinsed out bottles of soda filled with clear liquid. He passes them to a bystander, who shuffles them around in his hand until no one knows which bottles are which anymore.

“Ready,” we all reply.

“Close your eyes,” Dmitri commands.

We do.

Liquid is poured.

“Open.”

We open our eyes. Each of our shot glasses is filled.

“Are we doing this one by one or are we all drinking at the same time?” Zuri asks.

For a moment, no one answers. Then Minh says “The second one.”

Zuri looks to the rest of the players, including me, for assurance. We all shrug.

The world seems to slow down as we all reach for our shot glasses, holding them tentatively as we examine our portions for some kind of hint, but there’s no hint. There’s not supposed to be one. You’re just supposed to—

“On three,” Torsten says. “Dmitri counts.”

“Crap…” I mutter, grasping my glass a little tighter. The things I do to build up liquid courage.

“One,” Dmitri booms, shuddering with excitement. Chatter and anticipation builds up around me like a hastily made Jenga tower. “Two. Three!”

I screw my eyes shut and down my shot, waiting for my throat to burn from the inside out…

But it’s fine. It’s quite smooth actually, and it could be a little stronger given what I’m gonna be doing in like, an hour.

Zuri gags like hell, though. I open my eyes and cackle, my own laughter getting lost in the crowd’s as the reindeer struggles to choke her shot down.

“Zuri’s savaged!” someone shouts. The crowd erupts in cheers.

“Laugh it up,” she grunts. “I’m not done yet.”

“Round two!” Dmitri announces to the crowd, to more cheering. He shuffles his bottles again. Me and the rest of the players close our eyes as he pours our shots. In a matter of seconds. Like, faster than I can realize that he’s pouring them. He might have a future as a bartender or something. He’s like, weirdly good at this.

“One,” he counts as we take hold of our cups. “Two. Three!”

Let it be me let it be me. Me, _me._

It’s not. I got the vodka/water blend. Again.

I look at around the table, but no one’s gagging or making faces. Zuri, Minh and Lacy look equally as confused until Torsten lets out a little cough. And then another.

Before I know he’s about to hack up a hairball and everyone’s cheering, but there’s not even a _tiny_  smile on my face.

Why do I have to be so lucky?

“Round three!” Dmitri calls. Zuri’s looking a little sick, but Torsten’s back to his cool, calm, collected self. Me, Minh and Lacy are pretty excited, though. Our ears are perked, our eyes are wide open. We’re ready.

By this time we know the drill. We close our eyes, the shots get poured, and we takes our cups.

“One…two,” Dmitri says. “Three!”

I knock my shot back.

_Everyone_  but me begins to scream.

“Savages!” a few spectators call. The rest of the crowd breaks out into screaming and imitating the various primal calls of different predators.

“Everyone but Jamie!” someone else says. “Jamie wins!”

I get a few pats on the back and some praise, but I can’t help but frown and roll my eyes. “The goal of the game is to get drunk—the drunkest mammals win.”

I stick an arm out at Dmitri, who gets my vibe. He sniffs one of the bottles, wrinkling his nose before passing me the other one.

“Chug, chug, chug, chug!” a chant starts. I stare numbly at the bottle in my hooves, tipping it back and forth. The booze inside sloshes around, slickly moving from one point to the next without any resistance or thought. Not that I think that alcohol can think.

“Holy crap,” Zuri groans from next to me.

That’s it. I unscrew the bottle and put it to my lips.

Burning. It’s burning. The word “burning” made into something that isn’t fire, and then distilled into liquid. Or maybe it’d be better to say that it _is_  fire, distilled into a liquid. But that’d be cheesy. The point is that my lips tingle and my throat screams as I swallow an entire mouthful.

Hah. Mouthful!

I put the bottle down without any fuss. Everyone around me leans in, their eyes wide, waiting for me to gag or throw up or scream.

I don’t. I raise an eyebrow at Dmitri, who’s looking at me especially flabbergasted-like. “What’s up?”

Everyone screams their approval. It sounds like I just scored the goal at a soccer game or something.

You know, Cameron was the one who suggested I come out for this, anyway. Where is he?

I look around, looking for my best friend and not finding him.

Where is he?

Zuri puts a hoof on my shoulder. “You good?”

“I’m fine, I tell her.”

“What?”

“Oh, was that second part out loud? I’m fine,” I tell her, pushing her hoof off me. “You see Cameron anywhere?”

She shakes her head.

I stand up and walk away from the table. I don’t know what it is about him not being here, but I can’t help but feel like it’s nothing good.

 

* * *

 

Through violet light and long, white hallways I find the staircase and climb it. My body feels like a tree in a hurricane—though I don’t have too much of an idea about what a hurricane’s _really_ like. The world hasn’t seen one for what, eleven years? And that was because Bearlin’s weather control system was intentionally sabotaged.

These stairs mean a lot to me. Going up them means that I’m going to Cameron’s room. Right now, though, they just feel like a rickety ladder.

Once I reach the top I face my second challenge: the hallway. Now, we agreed that the upstairs hallway wouldn’t be open to the public originally, but then we realized that we don’t have bouncers and, even though Cammie’s the only _real_  predator in school (sorry, otters, but you know it’s true), he can’t be everywhere at once. So we settled for locking the doors to his mom’s room, the gaming room, and the home theatre.

Cameron’s room was the only thing upstairs that we left unlocked, because we figured that everyone who knew what was good for them would know not to mess around with his stuff, but somehow, there are still about fifteen mammals here, loudly talking and squeezing their red cups way too hard.

I pass by idle conversations, nodding to a few familiar faces on my way to the room I know and love.

Then I notice the tension, and the fact that the noise has died down with every step I’ve taken.

Unsuspiciously, I glance over my shoulder to find that half the kids that were here have left, and that the other half have their phones out when they didn’t before.

“What’s up?” I ask, to which my reply is a bunch of half-hearted “I don’t know”s and semi-shrugs.

I shake my head and walk the few more metres I need to get to Cameron’s door.

A girl’s moan comes from inside. Like, a sex moan. Like, the kind that you hear in porn.

“Hey, come on, have some respect,” someone says to someone else.

I’m angrily kicking the door open before I can hear the other mammal’s reply, and everyone else exits, which is something that I should find weird but I can’t exactly focus on that because what I see is two mammals inside of Cameron’s bed—the one that I was sleeping in not too long ago—and they’re more definitely fucking and what’s more is that I can see a striped tail poking out from under the covers.

My eyes feel like they’ve opened for the first time in their life. I don’t exactly register the feeling of me throwing myself on the doorknob and heaving it closed, but I see it through my eyes, and then I find myself alone in the hallway.

Techno music rises up through the floorboards and whispers sneakily through the stairs. It’s the only thing I can focus on. There’s scrambling from inside of Cameron’s room, and a few harshly said words. I cover my ears.

Only predator in school, my past thought repeats endlessly in my head. Cameron is the predator in school. The only predator. And I made the guest list, and I checked it, and I only invited other kids from our school. Half of our grade is here.

My face is frozen in limbo. It wants to laugh and sob and snarl all at the same time, so all I get to do is a dumb, open-mouthed expression that I’m sure looks like I’m dead, or dying. I lean against the wall, the cold surface of it playing against the pressure that’s dancing across the top of the muscles in my head, drawing lines in my brain like spiderwebs, making whatever it touches hurt like I’ve never felt hurt before until I can only think a single, all-encompassing thought.

 

 

Only I wasn’t too late, because there’s someone walking up to me and that someone is Cameron, looking at me with the warmest face of concern.

“Jamie?” he asks. “Why are you crying?”

I sob out loud, and he’s like a wolf obeying his superior, moving to wrap his arms around me like I commanded him to.

Cameron’s room door opens, and out steps a tiger I’ve never seen before, with hideous green eyes and a stupid expression on his face.

“Who the hell are you?” Cameron asks, a growl barely in his voice.

The strange tiger’s arm is being fruitlessly pulled on by Cynthia, yet another snowshoe hare in our grade.

I don’t fucking like Cynthia.

The tiger scratches his head, smiling nervously. “Uh, well I’m a friend of—”

That’s when my fist smashes against his teeth.

I scream at him incoherently as he staggers backwards, groaning shrilly as he shuts his eyes, delicately holding his mouth with both paws. Cynthia’s yelling, but I don’t listen to her. The music downstairs flares up. No one can hear us four except for us four.

“Get the _f_ _uck out! Get out of here!”_ I yell, my voice hoarse and demonic. More tears flow out of my eyes. My everything hurts.

The tiger’s eyes open. His head snaps up and he drops his paws from his mouth, which is bleeding. I see his claws unsheathe.

Cameron steps in front of me, his fur standing on end. I’ve only seen him like that once and it was when we met.

I don’t see the expression he makes as he looks at the other tiger, but I don’t think I would want to.

Cynthia and me watch on with bated breath, until the stranger shakes his head and walks downstairs, Cynthia in tow.

Effortlessly, I’m lifted up and carried into Cameron’s room. As we enter I take note of every single thing inside. The desk, with its two 4k monitors and stupidly obnoxious computer tower accented with glowing, electric pink lights. The posters on the wall for Cameron’s favorite movies: Kung Fu Panda 2 and The Mothman Prophecies. The way that the blankets look extra cozy in moonlight and how the beanbag chairs in the corner kind of look like giant, squishy beans.

I relax as Cameron sits on the floor, against the bed, and sets me down in his lap. I hold him close. He holds me closer, silently giving me permission to wipe my wet, tear soaked face on the crook of his neck.

“What happened?”

Another moment passes before I sniffle and finally speak up. “They were banging in your bed.”

“...What?”

“Kind of glad you sat on the floor, actually.”

“Oh god, I’m gonna have to clean my sheets.”

“I can do it.”

“Why were you crying?”

I swallow. “I thought it was you.”

“Oh.”

I wait for more, but there isn’t. “That’s all you have to say?”

“What else should I say?”

I have several suggestions. I feel like I have several suggestions. But I don’t, do I?

I pull my head back, looking at him with moist, red eyes.

“You’re right,” I say, leaning forward, my mouth parted slightly. “There’s nothing to say.”

He looks away as I finally take the plunge. My mouth lands on his neck. He doesn’t even acknowledge it.

“Actually,” Cameron says quietly. “There’s something I want to talk to you about.”

“Oh of fucking _course_  there is!” I bark, pushing myself off of him. I lose my balance trying to stand up backwards, though, and I fall and one of my antlers smashes against the hardwood floor. I hear Cameron immediately try to get up to make sure I’m okay, but I hold a hoof out towards him, stopping him.

I turn back to him, vengeance building in my breath like fire. “There’s always something, isn’t there? Some miraculous thing to stop me or you or both of us and you just had to go on and make it about something else the one time I—oh my god, just _fuck_ you.”

Cameron’s worried expression turns sour. “What are you even talking about right now?”

“The one time I actually try—”

“Try what?” he asks, playing stupid.

“Oh my god,” I put my hooves on my forehead. “Oh my god.”

“You’re incredibly drunk, aren’t you,” Cameron says quietly.

“That’s not the point.” I start rubbing little circles into the top of my head. Gotta calm down a little. I can still salvage this. “The point is—”

Even from up here, inside Cameron’s closed room, the sound of glass breaking is hard to miss.

Zuri screams. Cameron’s running out of the room before I can say anything else.

My arms drop. I want to cry, but I don’t. I just follow him.

 

* * *

 

Minh’s whimpering drowns out the early 2000’s throwback radio station that’s playing through Cameron’s speakers. He’s driving fast—I almost want to tell him to slow down, but Zuri would definitely reach around the seat and choke me out. I keep quiet.

Tundratown roads all look the same at night. It’s almost impressive that Cameron seems to know exactly where he’s going. As far as I’m concerned, he’s just driving on the same, really long road that never ends.

“It’ll be okay,” Zuri coos at her brother softly. I look at them through the rear view mirror, watching the reindeer stroking his head as he hugs her close. Inevitably, my eyes drift down to Minh’s knee, and the fact that it’s bent the wrong way.

That’s when I stop looking at the rear view mirror, obviously.

My saliva glands are going crazy. I roll my window down halfway and stick my muzzle out of it, resting my chin on the glass. Fresh, cold air kisses my nose. I breathe it in eagerly, opening my mouth a little bit and breathing in through that as well, spitting a little bit. I’m feeling really kind of sick, actually.

“Why would you want to do a backflip off of my table?” Cameron asks. “Actually, I think I just answered my own question.”

“Yeah,” Minh says. The car drives over a speedbump. He grits his teeth for a moment before he mashes his face into Zuri’s neck and screams into it, successfully muffling the sound. My throat starts to pulsate. I swallow and swallow and swallow but I don’t even know what I’m trying to swallow down. My body’s working on its own. I wish Cameron would stop driving.

“Careful, tiger,” Zuri warns Cameron loudly.

“I’m trying to be,” Cameron says. “Calm down.”

“How can I? My brother’s hurt!”

“It’s a dislocated knee.”

“You’re not a doctor.”

“I have eyes, and I can see that your brother’s knee is fucked up.”

“Don’t swear,” I tell him, drawing back from the chilly comfort of the outside of the car.

“I’ll do what I want,” he snaps.

“How much longer to the ER?” Minh groans.

Cameron glances at the GPS. “Two minutes. You’re not bleeding?”

“No,” says Minh.

“And you have your Zootopian Services Card?”

“Yes.”

“Ginny’s going to kill me,” Zuri says to herself. “This is gonna cost a lot.”

“I don’t think it will, but I’ll get my mom to give your sister a raise.”

“We don’t need your money. It’s just a pain in the ass to spend ours.”

“So this is how the Top 1% lives,” I giggle. No one laughs with me.

“We’re here,” Cameron announces as the car comes to a stop in front of hospital.

I can hardly read the neon sign denoting the place’s name. I’ve never been here before. It’s a depressing, too tall building that looks like something you’d make in Minecraft. From where we are I can see a pair of sliding door, but not much else. I can’t see anyone inside through the fluorescent lights.

Cameron turns back to Zuri. “Do you need help lifting Minh?”

The panda’s already in her arms, though. She raises a brow at him. “Open the door.”

Cameron presses the appropriate button. Zuri gingerly steps outside, trying her best not to move her brother too much. When she’s properly stood up and carrying him, she walks to the hospital doors, but not before she turns back and says “See you at school.”

We watch her enter the hospital, and stay for a few minutes after that.

“You think we got everybody out?” Cameron asks.

I nod. “Yeah. Let’s go home.”

“Not yet.”

The car wakes up with a rumble that I don’t hear but feel, and we start to move. Cameron drives out of the hospital’s lot and starts driving down a road. I’m not sure where we’re going. I just now realize that I’ve forgotten a jacket.

My maw’s still making way too much saliva. You’d think I had a slice of lemon in it or something, but there’s nothing. Actually, my mouth just tastes like warm, baked beans right now. I just swallow it all down. After a minute of this I have the dull realization that I can’t swallow anymore.

My body quivers, but I roll the window down and stick my muzzle out of it again. Whenever I feel like I have too much spit, I spit it out and hope that it lands on the ground and not the side of Cammie’s car.

“Where are we going?” I ask after another minute or so.

“I can’t believe this happened,” he says.

“What do you mean?”

“I…”

I spit a little more spit out into the open air. “You’re not gonna kill me, are you?”

I’ve always had a theory that I can feel when Cameron smiles. I don’t feel him do it now. I’ve never had so many of my jokes miss in such a short period of time.

“My dad’s dead,” he says.

His—what? I spit a couple more times and roll up the window before I turn to face him. Cameron’s gripping the steering wheel extra hard. His mouth’s pressed into a thin, hard line. He’s not kidding.

“What do you mean? No, I know what you meant, but, what?” I shake my head. “What? When did you…”

“During your game of Nighthowler. I was looking for you after that. Where did you go?” He says it like I left him for ten years and only just now came back.

“I was looking for you, remember?” I ask, shrugging. “Dude, where did this even come from?”

“Where,” he repeats, his eyes widening. “What the fuck are you talking about, Jamie? I got a call from my mom during your drinking game.”

“Okay, but you couldn’t have told me this before?”

“I tried!”

I flinch, pressing my back to the door. “You don’t have to yell.”

“Jamie, my dad is dead.”

“Right,” I nod. “Okay.”

“You have nothing to say?” he asks, again, like I’ve betrayed him in the worst way possible, but here’s the thing.

“Look, that sucks, but I thought you were done with that guy after he beat the shit out of your mom.”

He breaks suddenly, and in the split second that I realize that I never actually put my seatbelt on, my head whips into the dash. There’s a loud _crack_  as my antlers smash into where my airbags should be.

Searing pain splits my skull. I groan. “What the fuck was that?”

“You don’t care?” Cameron asks, _again,_ in the most dramatic way possible.

I spit a fat glob of saliva into my lap, which is fine because I’m wearing black jeans and it’ll just soak into them and camouflage anyway. I turn to glare at him. “Of course I care. Why did you do that just now?”

“You don’t care,” he states, getting louder with every word that he growls out of his mouth. “You spring a party on me last minute, I say yes. You avoid me for most of the night for no reason, I figure it’s because you’re talking to everyone else. But you sit there and you find out my dad died and you don’t care. You’re too drunk to. You’re suddenly some kind of alcoholic party goer that does shots every two minutes and throws himself on the first thing he sees. I had no idea where you were this entire night, I had no idea why you wanted to throw a party, I had no idea what was going on and then suddenly my dad is dead and _I don’t know what the fuck happened."_

“I do care!” I sit up, but there’s a sharp pain in my back that makes me cringe and slouch again. “I do, but you know who _didn’t_  care? Your dad. You know who was a total fuckin’ dick? Your dad. And now you wanna—”

I sit up, ignoring the pain. I lean closer to Cameron, who’s looking at me with wide eyes. “Now you wanna come here and tell me that he’s dead? Well that’s sad, but you shouldn’t care. That guy wasn’t good to you, and he didn’t care about you, but I _do.”_

My plan! My plan, oh my god how did I forget about that?

Tonight I was supposed to tell Cameron that I’m in love with him.

Tears fall out of my eyes like rain slipping off of an icy roof. He’s crying too.

I lean forward, lips pursed.

But he pushes me with all of his strength. My back slams against the door. I hear the chime of a car button being pressed.

“What—” is all I manage to squeak out before I feel the chilly air on my back, and Cameron pushes me again.

I scream as I fall backwards into snow, landing on my shoulder blades. I don’t have the strength to get up.

Cameron’s not looking at me. His eyes are on the road in front of him, and that’s where they stay.

“Cameron?” I ask. “Hey, Cameron.”

The car door closes. I don’t move to try and get inside again.

He pushed me. He’ll push me out again. Cameron pushed me and it hurt and he hurt me. He meant to.

The car locks, and I watch as it speeds away.

“I,” I start to say but nobody’s around so I stop.

I’m cold. I forgot to bring a jacket.

My hooves reach for my phone. I pull it out, clicking it open, but it doesn’t open. The screen stays black. I hold the power button for thirty seconds before I give up. It’s dead. I don’t know where I am.

I try to stand, but moving is suddenly hard. I don’t think Cameron’s coming back. I lay in the snow a few more minutes, trying to ignore my shivering body. My ancestors would prance around in the snow all night without jackets. I’ll survive. I’ve survived worse.

Breathing out of my mouth becomes a monumental task. I shut my eyes and roll over, and when I do I realize that I have to throw up.

I don’t want to throw up. I hate the feeling that it gives my throat, like all the skin’s burned away and been replaced by sandpaper. But not throwing up is a decision that I don’t get to make. I curl up, pressing my muzzle into the snow, burning up from the cold.

My vomit is the color of pineapple juice mixed with expired milk and diced tomatoes. It smells like vodka and cheap beer and rotten pizza. It melts the snow as it spills out of my throat like it’s being pulled out by some invisible force. My eyes water as I do so, retching loudly, hearing my voice gargle like I’m being drowned. And it doesn’t stop. It keeps going.

I throw up again and again and I can barely breathe an hour later, when I’ve crawled away from the small pond of sickness that I’ve made in the snow and collapsed on my side. I feel like what the dead fish at the market must feel like, lying in the crushed two dollar ice from the nearest gas station.

I don’t know where I am, I remember. I don’t even think I can walk.

“Fuck,” I cry, digging my knees and elbows and my forehead into the snow. “Fuck.”

I’m gonna die. I can’t really do anything about it.

I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die, the thought repeats in my mind. Where am I? I’m too cold. I can’t move. I don’t want to be here.

My eyes close. I fall asleep in the snow, the world flipping forward over and over.


End file.
